An empty shell

No, it's not about another new and offensive autism video. It's something my son said to me yesterday. And no, not my son with autism, who never feels like an empty shell, for the record, who is almost preternaturally good humored, who has such a rich inner life that he wouldn't feel empty if he were Charlton Heston's character in The Omega Man. No, this empty shell is Dubya.

Who turned seven yesterday.

He had a great birthday party after school, shared with a buddy of his who was born on the same day. Our school has this fantastic offering of after-school parties in the gym that the phys ed teacher leads. No fuss, no muss. Show up with cake, let her do the rest. It's a parent's party dream, and the kids LOVE it. They had a great time, and each of the boys went home with Santa Claus-sized bags full of gifts. Dubya's already built four of the smaller Lego sets he received.

But after the party, as we drove home, I had the boys recap their days, as usual. And Dubya told me that they'd had to have inside recess (thanks to this interminable, blessed blessed, drought-relieving cool rain we've been having). During that recess with another class, the kids at one point had to self group into threes. Dubya found himself wandering, alone, unable to find a group. He asked a few and they rejected him. On his birthday.

What do you say? All I could say to my son, whose self esteem on a good day is not the sturdiest, was, "Sweetie, you can always be in my group, any time. I'll always let you in." And he actually thanked me sincerely, bless his courteous little heart.

After TH had reported on his day, I reverted to Dubya and said, "So, did you have a good birthday day overall?" And he said, "Well, at school, I really just felt like an empty shell most of the day." That's the kind of thing that just...well, it's hard to even keep driving the car home when your child says something like that. On his birthday. When he's just turned seven.

I asked him why, knowing the answer. Yes, it was about that episode at recess. I wish there had been some observant adult around who could have seen that, facilitated his admission into a group. But there wasn't. And I had already noticed, without wanting to, that when the two birthday boys were choosing teams in the after-school gym party, the kids excitedly wanted to be on the other boy's team, but not on Dubya's.

When I got home with my little empty seven-year-old shell, I called his dad and asked him to get home from work as soon as he could. And we had a little party of our own at home where we tried to fill up the little shell as much as we could with love and attention and cake and ice cream and enormous boxes of Star Wars Legos as we had tucked away for him in the closet.

But that's not going to protect our most fragile child from the crushing weight of social rejection at school. Do we have to learn this early how little we can really do for our children out there in the great big world? After all, he's only seven.